Revisiting President Obama's Small-Business Tax Cut Claims

President Barack Obama makes a brief appearance at the Democratic National Convention on September 5, 2012.

This summer, the number 18 has crept into President Obama's campaign speeches — as in, "We've cut taxes for small businesses 18 times." (That's from a speech in Melbourne, Fla., earlier this month.) The first lady, Michelle Obama, mentions it, too. And, of course, it came up frequently at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, where it caught the attention of a regular You're The Boss commenter who calls himself Einstein. (No, not that Einstein.)

"Which small businesses had their taxes cut?" Einstein recently asked. "Hate to be skeptical but I know a lot of small-business owners and independent contractors and they never heard of ANY tax cuts. All this talk of helping small business from both political parties sounds like lip service. What are the facts?"

Happy to oblige, Einstein. Back in 2010, when the administration's boast was that it had merely cut taxes 16 times, The Agenda wrote a post about it. Here are the White House's 16 "tax cuts."

From the 2009 stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and other legislation:

• A new small-business health care tax credit.

• A tax credit for hiring unemployed workers in 2010.

• Temporary extension of bonus depreciation tax incentives to support new investment.

Since then, the president has added two more tax cuts to the list, according to a Small Business Administration spokeswoman, who supplied an update:

• Increasing bonus depreciation to 100 percent for 2011 (from the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010, the compromise law that keeps the Bush income tax cuts in place through this year; for 2012, bonus depreciation falls to 50 percent and then expires).

• Tax credits for hiring veterans, ranging from $2,400 to $9,600 (from the Veterans Opportunity to Work to Hire Heroes Act of 2011).

As you can see, some of these aren't tax cuts in the way many people would define them. Rather, they're tax incentives - you've got to spend money (on health insurance, a new employee or new equipment) to save money. Several are improvements or extensions of previous tax incentives. (By that score, some other measures could also be counted as tax cuts, but don't appear on the administration's list - for example, the 2010 Small Business Jobs Act further reduced the built-in gains period to five years for an asset sold in the 2011 tax year.) And, of course, most were temporary, and have already expired.

So has the president really cut taxes 18 (or more) times? We've reported — now you decide.